


unlikely

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: M/M, Qunari, Qunmance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-22 17:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tentative foray into the intricacies of the Qunmance -- Dion Mahariel, wilful and demonstrative, hunts for the guarded heart of his Qunari companion in a series of vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"There’s a restlessness in you that will get you into trouble, Mahariel," the Keeper would say, disapproval adding weight to her voice, and maybe she was right.

The strangeness in him was forgotten for a time, only to tickle at the corners of his mind at Ostagar — oh, had Duncan only lived… — and then surge forward again with a vengeance in Lothering, where he met the caged Qunari.

"If I let you go, what will you do?"

Dion Mahariel hadn’t realised he was holding his breath until after the warrior answered.

—

What sealed the deal was Sten’s matter-of-fact way of handling his body. He did not play at modesty, nor did he flaunt his lack of it. He just… stripped down to the waist when given the opportunity to wash up, changed bandages in oft-unseen areas without reservation, and most of all, ignored seventy percent of Zevran’s commentary.

On a misty morning, the men stood in a drowsy, haphazard line to take first piss, and Dion felt his eyes drifting over.

Sten caught him — of course he did — but said nothing, just laced up and strolled back to camp.

—

"So…"

"You are going to ask me the same questions the mage woman did, are you not?"

Dion started, his groove thrown. “Uh. What… questions would that be?”

"The ones regarding Qunari mating rituals."

Colour crept up Dion’s neck and bloomed over his cheeks. “Well, I… wait, no! No, I… I wasn’t. Not at all. Do I seem like I would?”

Sten stared. “Yes.”

Cornered, the elf exhaled gustily and pushed springy curls away from his flaming face. “Okay. Well. I wasn’t. So. Take that.  
I actually wanted to ask if you guys… well… I mean, you seem really solitary.”

Sten’s look remained impassive. “I am following you and your companions. Before that, I was a soldier among many. We are not solitary.”

"Fine. Do you… fall in love?"

"No."

"That’s impossible."

“ _You_ are impossible,” came the expected response.

—

On the way east from the Frostbacks, it rained, and rained.

Dion, normally fond of precipitation, caught cold and grew weak. Wynne made him tea and an embrium salve, and the fever broke, but sustenance was meagre and still his strength flagged.

They kept walking, because Dion said so.

A coughing fit caught him, and his foot sunk in a patch of sucking mud and he tripped.  
Mud-soaked and wheezing, Dion cursed loud and long between gasps for air. Oghren whistled, impressed.

Sten watched, but did not comment, or offer aid.

The last time Dion fell, no one saw, and he did not call out. There were tears, but they were silent, and masked by the rain.

And because something in him twinged like a finely-tuned lute string, Sten picked him up, and carried him like a child, and the elf did not protest.

—

"Do not get any ideas, elf."

"I already had them, giant."

—

There came a time when the darkspawn hordes temporarily overwhelmed the Qunari, and he buckled and fell to one knee, Asala still raised high and slashing, his face contorted in a pained grimace but fire still blazing in his eyes.

And Dion saw, and cleaved his way through the hurlocks in his path, and pushed off and leapt into the air in a deadly-graceful arc, and took down the emissary that had weakened Sten, decapitating it with one blow.

And he shot back up and leapt for the heavily-armoured genlocks, although Sten was already staggering to his feet, and they may have locked eyes for the merest of seconds, and no darkspawn survived either one of them that day.

"I would have killed you if you had fallen," Dion spat, wiping grime and sweat and blood off his face.

"Good," Sten replied, "kadan.

Good.”


	2. Chapter 2

Dion had this way of rubbing his pursed lips with his fingers, if he was deep in thought or trying to make a decision on something.  
Sten had watched him do it many a time — at vendor’s stalls, at the Circle of Magi, in front of lords and in front of peasants.

As of late, Dion had started doing it while looking at him, but… different, somehow. One of his fingers would slip along the saliva-slick inner flesh of his bottom lip, and Sten had a feeling the gesture had nothing to do with decision-making, now.

 

—

They were camped a little ways from the entrance into Orzammar, taking a night to enjoy the long-missed open sky. Oghren broke out his ever-present flask, freshly filled from the tap at Tapster’s, and Dion, apprehensive before because of the already-disorienting alienness of Orzammar, grabbed it from him and swilled enthusiastically.

"Careful now, son," Oghren chortled, "that’s prime dwarven ale you’re gonna be hurlin’ up in about five seconds. Waste my ale and I’ll kill y’."

Dion, miraculously, didn’t throw up. After a while, Sten found himself wishing he had.

He came to Sten’s pallet humming a broken tune, swaying when he came to a stop. “I’m cold,” he complained, coyly, and the Qunari heaved a silent sigh.

"Why do you torment me."

"I ask the same thing every time you take off your armour," Dion replied, grinning, as subtle as a warhammer.

"Go away. Go to the Antivan."

"I don’t like the Antivan." Dion plopped himself down right next to Sten, who rolled onto his back and threw a forearm over his face. "I mean, he’s nice. He’s really nice. But you’re…"

"Spare me."

"… Come on, you’re supposed to share body heat in the cold. And I’m so little and fragile…"

"You should have left me at Lothering."

"I’d have stayed with you there, too," and the pronounced slur in his voice did nothing to hide the heat in those words. "I would have. And given you a sword. And we would’ve fought the darkspawn."

"And died."

"Yes. But… not the same way. Not like dying in a cage. Helpless. Alone."

Sten thought about this, but discarded it. The ramblings of a drunken man — especially one embarrassingly besotted with him — weren’t something he was used to dwelling upon.  
Still, as far as sentiment went…

"I’m _cold,_ ” Dion insisted, pushing his small, lithe body into Sten’s side. The warrior cursed under his breath, but figured it would be more work to remove him than it would be to just let him stay.

Sten remained awake the rest of the night.  
It took days for the phantom feel of the elf’s body against him to dissipate.

—

"This is going to stop. Right now."

Dion turned away from his reflection in the shallow pool, pushed himself to a standing position, and faced the Qunari warrior with as impassive a face as he could muster.

"I guess it ought to, huh."

That wasn’t the response Sten was expecting. “…So you agree.”

"No." And now Sten could see the chinks in his facial armour, the tightness in his brow and jaw, the guarded hurt in his eyes.  
No matter. It was… improper. Rude. To lead him on. Because he _was_ leading him on, surely.  
The Qun dictated…

"To pursue an unreachable goal is folly." Dion turned his chin up slightly, trying to take strength in the logic. "I have ignored your desire for distance to indulge my own… foolish des…"

He trailed off, his face twisting briefly, and then stamped his foot in a gesture that reminded Sten of a wilful child.

"No, damn it. _No._ I was raised by the Vir Tanadahl. I do not waver, for I know what I want and I would fight for it. I bend, and bend, but I won’t break, I have learnt the ways of your Qun and they are important to me because you are, but I will not let you hide behind them. And damn it, together we are stronger than the one, you _know_ it, _tell_ me that’s not the truth!”

He swiped at the tears with a savage hand, flushed and scowling, and Sten, though always laconic, actually found himself at a loss for words.

They stared at each other from across the gulf, and finally, with a leap that feels infinite but somehow right, Sten crossed it.

"I… have not been completely honest. Kadan.”

—

"What would you tell your Arishok, were he to ask?" Morrigan asked cynically, and Dion’s hands falter briefly in Sten’s hair as he braids it.

"Nothing is different." Sten spoke quietly, his eyes closed, partially occupied with the way it felt to have other hands beside his own undertake this surprisingly intimate act. "I am still Sten of the Beresaad. My duty has not changed, nor has my devotion to the Qun. It has simply evolved."

"The Qunari aren’t exactly known for their evolutionary capabilities," Morrigan countered, dryly.

"We all have much to learn, mage. Even the Qunari."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> featuring some rare Shale Wisdom(TM)!

In Haven, Sten stopped walking.

Morrigan and Alistair and Dion kept moving, unaware, and the mage was the first to notice.

"Grease trap catch you, Qunari?" she asked lightly, turning to where he’d halted, a few paces behind them. Alistair frowned, and Dion felt his heart sink.

"This is north." Sten’s face was unchanged, but there was a contempt in his eyes that made Dion’s gut shrivel, just before anger flared.  
 _Thank Elgar’nan,_ he thought, preferring to be angry than afraid, than uncertain, than…

"No kidding?" he snapped back, tossing his shoulders back. His boiled-leather armour felt heavy under the fur cloak; conspicuous. Unnatural.

"The Blight rises from the south. And yet, under your… _leadership_ …” Even Morrigan curled her lip in reflexive response to the derision in his voice. “…we continue ever northward. I have been misled.”

"Shut up. I know what I am doing." Dion scowled, but the expression faltered when Sten reached for his sword.

"Prove it."

Left with no choice — he knew Sten would leave them standing there in the snow-covered village if he didn’t answer the challenge — Dion reached for his daggers. But his hands shook, and his heart fluttered in his chest like a trapped sparrow, and he’d never felt so craven in his life.

 _To win, I may have to kill him,_ the only coherent brain cell left in his head spoke up. _If that be true, I hope he kills me instead._

Alistair snapped into action. “Now, let’s not kill each other,” he chuckled uneasily, never shifting his gaze from Sten and his deadly blade. Morrigan snorted from where she’d moved back a bit, to avoid being in the path of bloodshed. “You see, Sten, there’s a… series of _events_ that have to take place before we…”

"I do not wish to hear stories." And to Dion, "Draw your weapon."

"Sten, I don’t…"

"Draw. Your. Weapon."

And it came to pass that they did fight, man to man, the Qunari warrior standing a full head and a half over the elf and weighing over twice as much besides, and Dion noticed at some point that he wasn’t dead, although he should have been.  
He was quick, and dodged the heavy greatsword with ease, but he should have been bleeding a lot more. And Sten shouldn’t have been wounded at all, but red shone on his bronze skin just as it shone on Dion’s.

He was encouraged until a sudden smack from the flat of the blade sent him sprawling, snow billowing up around him in an indignant cloud.

"You are a fool, and a clumsy one at that." Sten wiped his blade on the scrap of cloth he always carried, and strapped it on again. "I would not kill you."

Somehow, as he dragged himself to his feet, Dion felt worse, not better.  
And the contempt was still in the Qunari’s eyes.

—

"I don’t understand why he hates me," Dion seethed, too angry to cry.

"Don’t bother with understanding," Zevran shrugged. "Give him reason not to."

—

"Here."

Every muscle in him itched to throw the sword at Sten’s feet with the same disdain the Qunari showed for him, but respect and something else stilled his hand.  
He kept his face stony as he held the carefully-wrapped blade out, hilt-first.

Sten looked at it, and recognition flared in his eyes.

"Asala," he murmured reverently, drawing it from the leather and stroking his palm over the gleaming blade. He raised his gaze then. "It has been oiled, and sharpened."

"Yes." He hoped nothing he felt showed in his eyes, oh, he hoped.

"You have my gratitude," he said, returning his attention to the sword, to that which was called his soul, that which Dion had gone to the ends of Ferelden to find and return to him.

"May she keep you warm at night, although I doubt anything could warm you."  
He kept his voice flat and let the words speak for themselves, shrugging with exaggerated nonchalance before stalking away.

—

"Do you trust the elf?"

Shale made a humming sound that vibrated in its stony body. “The elf, huh. Well, which one?”

"The Grey Warden."

"I never trust a squishy thing," it replied, pushing its hand into a thick leather bag and drawing out a large, jagged crystal. It studied it critically. "Lightning or fire, you think?"

"Fire."

"I thought the same." Shale set the orange-red crystal aside and rummaged around the bag for a matching one.  
"The Grey Warden is full of fire, incidentally. Not literally, of course, because then it would be dead.  
You are… somehow not as squishy. More like stone, I'd say. I think the Warden could stand to learn from you.  
Also, stone can weather fire better than anything can. Maybe even strengthen it, give it a purpose. Think of a forge.”

Sten started to think about this, his brow furrowing, but the golem asked him to help it arm itself with fire crystals, and it was forgotten.

—

The next time Dion wheeled on him, eyes ablaze with indignation, mouth poised to spit some vitriolic retort to cover the hurt that seared his heart, Sten held up a warning hand.

"I will _not_ fight with you, Warden.”

"You never listen to me! But your soul’s in your _sword,_ what else would I expect…”

"I have investments in more than my weapon, Dion."

Shale made its humming sound, deep in its body, that sound that meant _'hmm!'_ , and even Morrigan raised an eyebrow.

"You never call me Dion." The elf stared at him, disarmed.

“ _Parshaara._ I am growing weary of being told what I never do. Shall we move on?”

Dion did not complain, or make snark-laden retorts, or even let Morrigan get under his skin, for the rest of the daylight hours.

That night, Sten heard him murmur to himself in wonder as he stared into the campfire, _"he called me by my name,"_ and, to himself, Sten might have smiled.


	4. Chapter 4

Sten opens his eyes to find Assan nudging him with his big, wet nose.

"What?"  
Assan nudges him again, whines, and Sten notices that the reason the mabari had gotten so close to him is because he is sitting where Dion should have been.

Dimly, he hears sniffling, and turns his head towards the fireplace, where the shape of the elf’s huddled body could be seen.

"Thank you, basalit-an,” he murmurs to the dog before pushing the sheets away and getting up.

"I didn’t want to wake you," Dion says before Sten even finishes crosses the room, resting his forehead on his knees.

Sten ignores this. “What ails you?”

"I just…" The elf heaves a sigh, hugging his knees to his chest, and Sten is reminded how remarkably small he is. How vulnerable. "I’m so damn scared, Sten. An _archdemon_? How am I supposed… how…”

He shudders, his breath hitching, and Sten watches, unmoving, waiting for the inevitable avalanche of words.

"I don’t _want_ to march to Denerim! We’re all going to die, that’s all, _all_ of us, and all of this would have been for nothing. Nothing! How the fuck am I supposed to _kill_ an _archdemon,_ Sten? How?”

"With a weapon, I’d presume."

Dion sobs, glaring at him from behind the veil of tears. “Oh, fuck you. Look at me, I’ll be squashed immediately. There is no chance. None at all…”

“Parshaara.”   
When the babble subsides, Sten sinks into a crouch and ignores the baleful look Dion is giving him, taking hold of his chin and forcing him to sit upright.  
"You are a Grey Warden. You are a warrior. You have proven yourself worthy to be followed, even though I disbelieved for a long time.  
You have kept _me_ from falling on more than one occasion, or have you forgotten so easily?  
I have never known you to shrink in fear. Do not start now.”

"But—"

"I said parshaara.  
I will be beside you, your friends as well.  
 _You_ are not going to fight an archdemon. _We_ are. And no weapon formed against us has prospered yet.”

Dion breathes in deep, taking strength from Sten’s voice and words both, and when he raises his eyes again, their gaze is not so desperate and wild, but still beseeching.

"All right. All… all right."

He is still frightened, Sten knows. He will be frightened all the way to Denerim. He will tremble at the gates, but he will open them, and he will take his bow in hand, and his hands will steady, and his gaze will be steel, and his will iron.

And so Sten opens his arms — “Here. To me, kadan.” — and lets Dion take shelter in his embrace, waits until his heart stops fluttering in his chest, and then lifts him like a child and takes him back to bed, because in the morning there would be no more time, and it was true — they _could_ all die at the archdemon’s hands, all of them.

Sten simply had no intention on letting that happen.

—

At the gates of the burning city, Dion lifts his chin and Sten watches the trembling melt out of his muscles, watches his shoulders set and his eyes harden.

“Asit tal-eb. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam—”

“Anaan esaam Dion Mahariel,” Sten finishes, and then opens the gates.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ some NSFW content. ]

They’d fall asleep the same way every night — Dion, small and easily chilled, would leave his tent to come push his body into Sten’s side, and the warrior would awaken and sigh and let Dion be cradled in the crook of his large arm, and for a while he would debate silently with himself, but find that he could think of no truly logical reason to push the elf away. Sleep would return, black and peaceful.

And so it was, save for the times when Dion would be wracked with Taint-touched nightmares, during which time Sten would remain still and stolid, a rock on a stormy sea that Dion could grab onto had he the sense.

And if, at some point in the dead of the night, Sten would rouse only to feel Dion stirring against his thigh, he would simply ignore it.  
The elf was young, with a young man’s desires.  
They were not to be encouraged.

—

Sten possessed a keen awareness of every inch of him.  
He knew the capabilities of every muscle, the flexibility of every limb. He knew the breadth of him and the height of him, and how much space he took up. He knew at a glance whether an article of clothing or a piece of armour would fit him, whether the seams would be strained or whether the edge of the plate would cut into some part of him.  
He knew the heart that beat steadily behind the swell of pectoral muscle; the brain whose gears turned behind the thick bone of the skull; the reproductive organs that hung heavy and fragile and constantly required protection.

Similarly, he knew Dion — he knew the range of flexibility and quickness that those sinewy muscles possessed; the vulnerable jut of bone at his jaw and collar and hip; the organs that sat so close to the surface just behind his soft, lean belly.  
Less pragmatically, he knew that Dion was malleable and tactile; that he could be quelled or roused by simple, pointed touches; that there was an elegant curve to every movement.  
He knew, without sentimentality or favoritism, that Dion was beautiful. He knew the sun favoured the elf’s spice-brown skin and reckless, curly hair. He knew there was leonine grace in the way he’d stretch in the morning, in the way he’d turn his face up towards Sten with that sleepy-eyed smile, in the way he prowled through the woods when they heard the howl of wolves.

The Tamassrans who’d raised him did their jobs well, and he would never forget, but somewhere deep in his gut something was loosening, and though he had always been aware of his body, very aware, he was beginning to think there may indeed be something about it that he had not accounted for.

Do not be weakened, he thinks to himself, there is nothing to question, the Qun is all, and all is in the Qun, but more and more often Sten began to wonder, truly wonder, what it would be like to feel the strength and feral grace of that lean elfin body in his own hands.

—

"Suppose you’re sizing him up for heavy armour and a helmet, yes? Wondering about the strength of elven teeth?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I’ve seen the look you’ve been giving the Warden lately. It’s speculative in a way I’ve never seen you look at anyone else."

“Parshaara, Morrigan…”

"Yes, yes. Parshaara indeed.  
'Tis interesting to witness you joining the land of the living, nevertheless.”

—

He hadn’t meant to observe, and he’d felt strange and off-kilter for days afterward. As if the tapestry of himself and his certainty about the world at large was unravelling at last, leaving him vaguely ill and snappish.

He’d been returning from making water when he’d heard the rustling, snuffling sounds. It was dark but the moon was high and full, and Sten suspected some small woodland animal, but when he drew nearer, if only to startle it off, he didn’t hear the scrabble of hastily retreating footfalls.

Brow furrowed, but too tired to care, he started to turn away, but he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned back.

Dion sat with his bare back against the ridged trunk of a sentinel tree, his hair snagging against the bark as he leaned his head against it. One hand splayed on the inside of one linen-covered thigh, and the other hand—

Sten inhaled sharply and averted his gaze, closing his eyes against the sight. His heart thudded restlessly, warning him to forget it and return to camp, but he’d already seen, and the dangerous curiosity that had started to uncoil in him weeks ago was flaring hot and eager.

He was already lost. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

Dion was panting now, his hand curled loosely around his manhood, corkscrewing as he brought it up and over the head and then back down to the base, his lips parted and eyelids fluttering.  
He breathed in with a hissing sound, muscles straining as his hand tightened, and similarly something tightened alarmingly in the pit of Sten’s gut, and by the time his trembling legs brought him back to the campsite, he was sweating.

 _There is no Ben-Hassrath here,_ he thought to himself, and felt faint.

—

"Have I done something?" Dion finally gets up the nerve to ask, a few days’ time from Denerim’s gates.

"What makes you think you have done something?"

"You’ve been… particularly distant. I mean, you’re always kind of… _you,_ but it feels personal now.”

Sten answered purely out of duty to the man he deigned to call kadan, but not because he wanted to. “I have been feeling strangely. I require time to think.”

The elf is quiet for a while.  
"Morrigan says—"

“Vashedan,” Sten swore under his breath.

"Morrigan says that she thinks I might be changing you. I hope that is not the case. I don’t mean to."

"You are a fool to think you will not effect change, whether you mean to or not."

"But the Qunari—"

"We are of one body and of one purpose. We are not of one mind."  
And though it pained him to say it, declaring individuality when he has never known anything of the sort, it also felt correct.

"You are… not upset with me, then?"

"No."

It is a few more minutes before he can add, “In fact, I may need you to teach me something.”

—

_Kadan slides his fingers through my hair, and the strangeness is tempered by the small sparks of electric feeling that set off along my scalp._

_Kadan touches the line where hair stops and head begins, touches the sides of my forehead, my cheekbones, my jaw, the side of my neck, and not with his fingers, but with his lips._

_I had assumed I knew Kadan’s body well, but there are other things I had not been aware of — a rich, woody scent, like the forest after a light spring rain; a feverish sort of heat that blooms under his skin wherever I place my hand, the sensitivity of his pointed ears. I wonder if this is common for all elves, and I start to ask, but I know he will only rebuke me for thinking too hard, too much, and remind me to feel._

_I had assumed I knew my body well, but there are things I had not been taught — the way some muscles tense when they are touched, a strange and almost frightening spread of warmth in the abdomen that has nothing to do with grievous battle wounds, something primal and perhaps repressed that is triggered by calloused hands and a warm mouth._

_From a young age, I was taught the art of war, and that is what I know.  
But I am learning this art of Kadan’s, this art of warm flesh and red heart, and I will carry it with me; the way my soul is always at my back, may my heart always be at my front._


	6. Chapter 6

Mahariel was dirt and leaves, rain and wind, sun and sky. Mahariel didn’t read, or write, or paint. Mahariel found himself in bared teeth and tossed hair, in nude flesh stretched out on warm grass, in smell and touch and taste.

The Keeper had given him the nickname ‘Dionis’, a fragment of a name that had once belonged to a long-lost god. _Dionis_ represented a child of revelry, of earthly lusts, of the wild hunt and the victorious return.

He was Dion Mahariel now, and though the wild hunt still rampaged within him like a spreading wildfire, he was loving a warrior who fed upon order, structure, symmetry.  
Who stopped to study the arrangements of leaves, the blooming habits of flowers, the patterns of growth.

For him, Dion had taken up a paintbrush, and with hands unused to artistry, put it to canvas.

He found soon enough that he was dissatisfied with every stroke of the brush, with every bold swath of colour, with every attempt at detail.

He swiped his arm across the low table, knocking the vase of flowers to the floor, spilling pigment and water.

"I cannot do this," he declared, petulant and furious with himself, clamping down on the wooden handle of the brush with his teeth and gnawing.  
"I cannot."

—

Sten finds the discarded attempt, slashed by a dagger, tossed in a corner of the inn room. Dion was gone, but the sun was still high in the sky, and Sten did not think too long upon it.

But the canvas gave him pause. He smoothed it out on the paint-splattered table, sharp eyes taking in the elegant curves of the brush-strokes, the boldness of the colour, the vibrancy and motion trapped behind Dion’s faltering fear of failure and ridicule.  
Calloused fingers tapped the discarded work decisively, and Sten left it there, exposed, found.

—

"You saw it, didn’t you."

Dion was a ball of tight, tense restraint. Sten knew he meant the painting as soon as he opened his mouth.  
Gently, he closed the tome in his lap.

"I saw it."

"Don’t think anything of it. I won’t be doing it again."

"And why not?"

His eyes and nostrils flared indignantly. “It was ugly. Stupid. A child’s attempt at art. I can’t—”

"You are a hunter. A warrior. This is the first time you have ever picked up a paintbrush. Did you expect mastery at the first stroke? Did you assume it takes no skill to create art?"

Abashed, Dion flushed and looked down at his feet.

From his pocket Sten withdrew a new paintbrush, and held it out. Dion stared at it, then at the Qunari’s face, then back at it. Uncertainty clouded his features.

"If it is for you to learn, you will learn, and you will be proficient.  
If it is not for you to learn, you will know.  
There is only one way to find out.”

—

After a few months, Sten mentioned the paintbrush, offhandedly. Dion hung his head, and Sten knew.

"I am not a painter," Dion sighed, pained. "I… wanted to make something beautiful, because I know how much you like art…"

"There are many things I appreciate, because they are what they are, without question. Because they fulfil their purpose in this world.  
When you loose an arrow, does it not sing?”

Dion pondered this, and Sten watched his features soften, relax with understanding, with another piece clicking into place.

"It knows its purpose, and it rejoices in the realisation of that purpose," he murmured, and then flushed when he realised he’d spoken aloud.

"Be careful, Kadan. You may find yourself viddathari yet."


End file.
